When you drive a new car for the first time, there are always things you have to get used to. With this one it was the absence of a handbrake. After parking, and successfully not bumping into the cars on either side of the space using the beep…beep…beep… beep... beep… beepbeepbeep audio parking aid, I reached automatically for the handbrake. Not there! Instead I found the Meriva's "flexirail system", a sliding track with various cup holders, coin holders, etc. Lovely, but not what I needed at that point.

Eventually I found a button with P on it, which seemed to do the trick – the "electric park brake button", Vauxhall says; the "fingerbrake", my girlfriend says. She wanted to know if it would do fingerbrake turns. Not at all successfully, we found out later. But the Meriva is not really the car for that kind of behaviour.

What is it good for, then? Well, it's good for getting things – like very old people (or very young people) – in and out of the back, on account of its revolutionary wide-opening, rear-hinged back doors. Suicide doors is the technical term, I believe, though Vauxhall probably doesn't encourage it, and they have reduced the risk of death to the very old/young in the back by making it impossible to open the rear doors if you're going faster than 2mph. We tried, when we trying the fingerbrake turns.

I'm not going to do all the stuff about ride and handling because, a) there's not room, b) I'm not really qualified to, and c) no one really reads this page for that – that's what WhatCar? magazine is for. Suffice to say, it does everything very well, as modern cars tend to. What I can say, though, with honesty and authority, is that when a Citroën C3 Picasso – a similar-sized MPV – pulled up next to me at the lights, I was jealous. It just looked nicer, something you'd feel more pleased to call yours, even if it was harder to get granny in and out of.

The Meriva is hideous – fact. The ripple along the side is a disaster, it looks as if it's crashed into something head on, and sent a shock wave along itself. And there's something about those doors that reminds me of something, what is it... got it! A London taxi – not the new one, but the Fairway, with the rear-hinged doors and the handles at the front. So much so that when my girlfriend asked for a lift to Luton airport, I astounded her – even myself – by agreeing, but only if she sat in the back. Well, she is getting on a bit...

Then, when we got there, I did something I've always wanted to do: I lowered my driver's window, reached out, and opened her door, without getting out. Then I charged her 48 quid.